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Wacom Tablet Support Might Be Axed From Qt 5

09-08-2012, 12:40 PM

Phoronix: Wacom Tablet Support Might Be Axed From Qt 5

While Wacom tablets command most of the graphics tablet market-share, within the open-source Qt world it seems not many people actually care about these input devices. Wacom support -- after being pressed by many long-standing open bugs -- is being talked about for removal from Qt 5.0...

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I just don't really understand how it breaks so easy. How do they not realize by now the things that would cause breakage after every release? To me, that's like cooking on the stove and you somehow keep forgetting to not put your hand on the surface, so you just decide to use the microwave instead.

Anyways, considering that not many people have these tablets and even less of these people use linux, I'm surprised there was ever support for them to begin with. TBH, I'm not really sure what programs even take advantage of their advanced features. While I'm not saying that support should be removed, I don't see who really needs it ATM. I feel like if the Adobe suite were to be ported to linux, then these drivers should get more attention.

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I just don't really understand how it breaks so easy. How do they not realize by now the things that would cause breakage after every release? To me, that's like cooking on the stove and you somehow keep forgetting to not put your hand on the surface, so you just decide to use the microwave instead.

Anyways, considering that not many people have these tablets and even less of these people use linux, I'm surprised there was ever support for them to begin with. TBH, I'm not really sure what programs even take advantage of their advanced features. While I'm not saying that support should be removed, I don't see who really needs it ATM. I feel like if the Adobe suite were to be ported to linux, then these drivers should get more attention.

Regardless of how many people actually use linux creative tools (gimp inkscape etc) support for popular devices like wacom tablets is a must if you want these programs -and linux- to gain traction.

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Regardless of how many people actually use linux creative tools (gimp inkscape etc) support for popular devices like wacom tablets is a must if you want these programs -and linux- to gain traction.

I agree completely.

Allthough I have to add that removing wacom support from Qt does not mean there is no wacom support at all in Linux. You can still use Xinput directly to access these devices. It's not as comfortable as having native (& cross-plattform compatible) support from your toolkkit, but it works.

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Regardless of how many people actually use linux creative tools (gimp inkscape etc) support for popular devices like wacom tablets is a must if you want these programs -and linux- to gain traction.

I agree and have thought of this myself, but then I realized that commercial creative tools would have been ported by now if anyone seriously cared. The wacom drivers have been around for a very long time in a linux perspective. These tablets aren't a necessity for creative tools to be ported, but creative tools are a necessity for these tablets to have a reason to be maintained. If linux just keeps the bare minimum support for these tablets (meaning, they can at least be used as pointer devices), then I feel like that's all that really matters until something professional comes along.

I have no problem with anyone feeling the need to keep these drivers fully up-to-date with all features that Windows offers, but I don't blame anyone for not wanting to do it when there's almost nobody using them for their intended purposes.

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Anyways, considering that not many people have these tablets and even less of these people use linux, I'm surprised there was ever support for them to begin with. TBH, I'm not really sure what programs even take advantage of their advanced features. While I'm not saying that support should be removed, I don't see who really needs it ATM. I feel like if the Adobe suite were to be ported to linux, then these drivers should get more attention.

I think Krita may have been getting some use from artistic types, though that's presumably not going to last if Qt stops supporting tablets altogether.